2025 - A Year in Review

Another amazing year of gaming for me here in Southport. Good friends here and scattered about NC have done a LOT of gaming with me over the year. Not to mention the friends at wargame and board game conventions I have attended.

Gen Con was a first this year and although a ton of fun, I can play most of the games right here in Southport. It certainly was a spectacle and will return in a couple years!!

Historicon was impressive as usual and I ran two games at the convention, the first was the Battle of Sabis River using WoFun 18mm flats and To the Strongest rules. Secondly, I ran my Vauban's Wars siege game. In both games the players really seemed to enjoy themselves.

We also introduced another couple to Euro style games and they have embraced it! Don't tell anybody, but I also learned to play Mahjong and I am a substitute for when Paige doesn't have enough players. Never thought I would get into Mahjong.

Given that I found Board Game Arena for online Euro gaming my total games in 2025 have reached a new high. 

205 Board\Wargames and 17 Miniature Games!!! Full listing at the bottom of the page.

The Paint Table

Being returned has allowed me to refocus on painting miniatures and terrain. Some of the bigger items:

1) Loads of WW1 figures: late war Germans, British, and Americans. (roughly 5 divisions painted and  flocked!). For early war, I painted 2 British divisions, and 3 Germans Divisions (see them in action here). This was a huge accomplishment, but still have many others to paint: Early War Austrians, Early war French, Serbians (need to order these), and RCW.

2) Masses of terrain items for my Vauban's Wars Historicon game including Siege guns, entrenchments, gun emplacements, gallows, mines, buildings, glacis, fire markers, fortress templates. I'm extremely happy with the progress I made here. Is a project ever completed though?!

3) Started working on a canal terrain piece for my WW1 battles. I didn't have it for the Mons game, but that inspired me to work on it. I have about 4 more pieces to make, then I can paint and terrain them.

Games of 2025

Arranged most played.

Euro Style Games

• 28 x Mahjong (quick games)
• 24 x Arkham Horror Card Game (This consumed a LOT of my Tuesday night gaming as we played several campaigns. This is a lot of fun)
• 10 x Planet Unknown
• 10 x Darwin's Journey
• 8 x Fromage
• 8 x Ark Nova 
• 6 x Castles of Burgundy
• 5 x Castles of Mad King Ludwig
• 5 x Art Society
• 4 x Suburbia
• 4 x Endeavor Deep Sea
• 4 x Space Base
• 4 x Flip-7
• 4 x Six Sojourns
• 3 x Azul
• 3 x Tuscany (Viticulture) 
• 3 x Hansa Teutonica
• 3 x Agricola 
• 2 x Spirit Island
• 2 x Architects of the West Kingdom
• 2 x Furnace
• 2 x Bruges
• 2 x Charioteer (GMT)
• 2 x Cascadia 
• 2 x Copenhagen 
• 2 x Lisboa
• 1 x Lost Ruins of Arnak
• 1 x Airlines Europe
• 1 x Artemis Project
• 1 x Deep Regrets
• 1 x Teotihuacan 
• 1 x Unfathomable 
• 1 x Andromeda's Edge: Genesis (GenCon)
• 1 x Explorers of the North Sea
• 1 x Galactic Cruise
• 1 x Family Business
• 1 x Eclipse 2nd Dawn
• 1 x Obsession
• 1 x LotR - Fate of the Fellowship
• 1 x Stationfall

Wargames

• 14 x Fighters of Europe
• 2 x Task Force
• 2 x SAS Rogue Agent
• 2 x No Peace without Spain
• 2 x Conquistadors
• 2 x Vendee '93
• 2 x 1775 (Academy Games)
• 2 x Purple Haze 
• 1 x Great War Commander
• 1 x A Most Fearful Sacrifice
• 1 x World at War '85 (@ GenCon)
• 1 x Siege of Jerusalem
• 1 x Bloc by Bloc
• 1 x Rock of Chickamauga
• 1 x Kaiser's High Seas Fleet
• 1 x King in the North (Carlist Wars)
• 1 x Space Empires 4X

Miniature Games

• 3 x 15mm Vauban's Wars Siege 
• 2 x Star Saga (28mm sci-fi crawler)
• 1 x 28mm F&IW (Mauga's Revenge)
• 1 x 28mm Doom Divers
• 1 x 18mm WoFun TtS Rome vs Gaul (To the Strongest)
• 1 x Naval Battle (WW1)
• 1 x 15mm SYW 
• 1 x 6mm Age of Hannibal Punic Wars
• 1 x Goebens Playtest (Naval WW1)
• 1 x 18mm Wofun figures, Sabis River 57BC 
• 1 x Crisis on LV-242 @Historicon
• 1 x 28mm Skirmish - 18th - Retreat to Dublin - Vikings vs Irish
• 1 x 15mm GWSH2 Mons 1914 - Germans vs Brits
• 1 x Vikings vs Saxons 18mm WoFun - Command & Colors Medeival.

Gaming Goals for 2026

After such a productive year in 2025, I hope I can maintain the pace in 2026.

1. Continue to play as many Euros with friends and family as possible. At least twice a week.
2. Go to at least two miniature conventions: Historicon (July) and Williamsburg Muster (February). As the corollary, I need to sell some items at the Muster flea market to clear out space. 
3. Continue to make great progress on my WW1 and RJW collection. Painting, basing, flocking, etc.
4. Work on my last Taiping Rebellion units so I can call that collection "complete".
5. Run 20+ miniature games in 2026. I have already run one Taiping Rebellion game which I will blog about shortly.
6. Get more wargames on the table, by gaming with local friends.

Cheers from Southport waterfront!

Eric

Vauban's War Playtest for Historicon Game

G'Day wargamers!

We just completed my last playtest for the Historicon convention. Should be one helluva adventure at Historicon!

Pre-work

The sweatshop has been busy here at the Burgess household, as I have upgraded or completed the following VW items:

• Painted spies being hung (Hallmark figures - small 15mm). A little mood lighting for the game. :-) 
• Painted Gabions for the First Parallel. This took forever and was very tedious and repetitive. I really love the results though, and certainly better than my last post showing the base tan-colored gabions. Gag.
• Rebased and flocked sappers to make them easier to handle.
• Flocked the bases for seven wagons for the garrison and besiegers.
• Built three walls (actually four) to make the fort into a potential five-star fort, but only four bastions will be in the Historicon game. Made some more glacis terrain to properly encapsulate the fortress.
• Made a base to put the fort on to allow quicker setup and used glue dots to keep it in place. I still want to have flexibility in my fort designs so I'm very hesitant at gluing everything in place. I may buy more bastions from PaperTerrain, so I can glue some of these structures into place. I'm pretty concerned about setup time for my game, especially if I can't arrange a helper or two.
• Terrained the "ruined" version of all my PaperTerrain houses. I also made one burned out village to add to the table.
• Painted 24 artillery crew (from Hallmark) for my Siege Guns (also from Hallmark). Painting figures is much more difficult with older eyes!
• Created about 30 gun emplacements to use instead of foam markers I was using. I printed out a wood planking patter from an internet image and resized it for my miniatures. Then printed it on good paper than mounted it on the same foam paper sheets I was using. I like how they turned out.
• Painted the wood logs in my 2nd and 3rd parallel trench pieces. This took a while but was worth it.
• Upgraded the rosters to eliminate units not in play and added tips for both sides so they can read them and jump into the game.
• Changed my UI loss markers to stacks of cannon balls (BBs) that were black, so I just had to glue them together, add dirt, then seal them with flat matt finish. I really like how they look. One marker per UI lost. 
• Ordered double height gabions just in case I have the energy to upgrade my besieger rally point. This likely won't happen as I have too much on my plate right now.

AI Discussion of Vauban's Wars

NotebookLM 

or

https://notebooklm.google.com/notebook/50052286-bf70-4b20-9846-53071043e428/audio

The Game

I lost my phone in the ocean so I lost all of my game photos. Sigh.

Anyway, wanted to post the Pre-work stuff so I remember. :-)

Eric

GWSH2 - Battle of Mons - the Left Flank

Good evening wargamers!

Today we fought the British left flank at the Battle of Mons August 1914.

Rules: Great War Spearhead 2 (GWSH2)

Scenario: Mons Canal - Marching to War Scenario Book for GWSH2

Miniatures: my collection of 15mm WW1 miniatures (mostly Minifigs). Sorry I couldn't get the German artillery crew painted. 

Terrain: Cigar Box mats, FlexTerrain roads and canal, and PaperTerrain buildings.

Players: Eric (British), Rob & Michael (Germans)

As usual, click on the photos to see bigger versions of the photos.

The Scenario

The Map

My rendition of the map on the tabletop with the British in light entrenchments south (right side) of the Mons Canal.

Victory Conditions

The Game

Michael (German 5th Division) and Rob (German 6th Division) marked their planning maps with their "orders" for their 8 total regiments, plus artillery. The 5th Division assaulting St. Ghislain, while the 6th took Jemappes and the center road bridge. My British 13th Brigade defended the St. Ghislain area, while the smaller 9th Brigade was spread TOO thin across the other two road bridges.

13th Brigade defending the bridge and railroad bridge near St. Ghislain:

The poor 9th Brigade put in an untenable situation right from the start by their commander (me)! This brigade had to defend half the table! I should have swapped the brigades so the larger brigade could cover the larger front. 

The entrenchments around Jemappes:

The Germans arrive! Two regiments of the 5th Division! 

The 6th Division arrives, sorry for the fuzzy photo:

A better view:

Tetre (2 VP) the undefended village falls to the Hun's 12th Regiment!

Because of the range and hidden nature of my British troops the Germans moved at least three times before they could even come under fire, let alone see my troops. 

OH MY! Three German regiments (and 2 artillery regiments) of the 5th division advance on St. Ghislain! I'm feeling a bit insecure! He has 9 batteries to my 1!!! Steady lads!

German 24th Regiment, 6th Division slithers through the woods towards the bridge in front of Jemappes.

Meanwhile, two other German regiments, plus two artillery regiments make a bee-line to the isolated bridge in the middle of the table! Division HQ in the bottom right of the photo. Round Forward Observer (FOs) can be seen with their artillery regiments.

My 13th Brigade 18pdr and Machine guns open up on the masses of Germans across the canal from St. Ghislain! A German company destroyed and several others suppressed. Black markers indicate non-moving fire. 

An idea of the mass of Germans I'm facing!! Thank goodness the canal bridges are the only way across.

6th Division main force deploy their artillery regiments and start softening up my entrenchments with High Explosive shells and sharpnel.

24th Regiment slips through the woods for point-blank fire into the defenses of Jemappes!

Michael wants to break some eggs! The 8th Leib Grenadier Regiment charges across the railroad bridge! Many brave Germans will not return home. NOTE: I didn't have railroad tracks! Uggh! So I used my old dark brown FlexTerrain roads (Thanks Jim Brokaw) for the rail lines.

Meanwhile the center looks a bit frail with 2 MG sections and one rifle company attempting to hold off the entire 20th Infantry regiment with artillery and infantry support!

German assaults across the bridges near St. Ghislain. Trenches are home-made by me about 20 years ago! 

A better view of the attack!

Germans start pounding the British line with indirect 77mm Regimental artillery fire! This was not that effective despite the pucker factor here on the British side. Every suppression counts though! 

Smaller blast markers indicate suppressed units.

German 20th regiment crosses the center road bridge as there is little to stop them (command radius issues with the British). Why haven't the Germans attacked Jemappes yet?!

German 24th regiment uses the cover of the woods to advance closer to Jemappes and keep casualties to a minimum.

Then they rush the bridge and defenses!

The German 12th has thinned out the enemy, but at a cost of many good Germans lying dead on the bridge or in the canal.

The 20th regiment in the center has blasted the British defenses and has moved into close assault with the remaining defenders of the 9th Brigade!

Mounds of German bodies cover the bridges and float downstream in the canal! Each skull is a lost company (note that many of the losses are in the British entrenchments)

The fighting is vicious across the bridge at Jemappes and into the entrenchments. German 24th Regiment making steady progress and eventually wear out the British defenders!

A desperate bayonet charge by a company of the 9th Brigade eliminates a German company in the outskirts of Jemappes! The last Hurrah!

The center road bridge is completely overrun by the 20th and they have 2 Regiments coming to their aid! 

At this point, the Germans has 6 VP (Tertre, Jemappes, and forced the 9th to test morale), while the British had only 4 VP (St. Ghislain and Flenu). With the center broken and 3 German regiments
streaming across that center bridge and no way for the British to retake Jemappes we called the game.

THAT WAS A BLAST! Completely different type of game and lots of tactical decisions to make.

The Casualties

German Casualties

The 5th Division took the most casualties for the Germans with 15 companies destroyed. Most died on the canal bridges. As Michael said, "you can't make an omelet without breaking eggs!"

8th Leib Grenadier Regiment - 5 companies.

12th Grenadier Regiment - 5 companies.

52nd Regiment - 5 companies.

6th Division 

20th Regiment - 4 companies.

35th Fusiliers - 1 company.

24th Regiment - 2 companies.

Germans lost no MGs or Artillery!! Due to proximity, range, and spotting rules this would have been very difficult for me to achieve as the British.

British Casualties

Well, when you are outnumbered 4 to 1 in infantry and 18 to 1 in artillery things are not going to be easy. Hahaha

9th Infantry Brigade (guarding Jemappes) - 8 companies and 2 MGs

13th Infantry Brigade (guarding St. Ghislain) - 4 companies and 2 MGs

Post Game Thoughts

Everyone seemed to enjoy themselves and want to play again. I hope to run another GWSH2 game before the end of the year.

I'm going to work on a different terrain idea for a canal which I can use for this period. I'll post pictures of that when I'm done. I'm also going to paint the flip side of the FO circle counters so when they move, they flip over so you remember you can't use them to call in artillery that turn. I'm going to make movement sticks 8" long as most everything (infantry, MGs, etc) moves at that rate. It will have a tick mark at 4" for combat moves. I thought I had Railroad tracks in N scale, and now that I don't I have to buy some for my WW1 games. Sigh. Lastly, I will update my home-made Quick Reference Sheet (QRS) for GWSH2. I like to change the layout and add additional modifiers that are not present on the original QRS for the game.

Have a wonderful day!

Eric

Working on my WW1 Collection - Artillery & Infantry

Over the years I have accumulated a lot of 15mm WW1 miniatures. Nearly every flea market at Historicon I have found a nice amount of WW1 miniatures. This year was no different. Since I'm retired now, I have time to finally work on this collection.

ARTILLERY

The last few months have seen a lot of progress, including rebasing artillery from Germany, Britain, and USA. Here are some photos of the process. Note I haven't flocked any of the bases yet, but all bases labeled on the bottom so that they can be identified by those not familiar with WW1 artillery.

6 x 75mm Gun M1879 (USA) (French gun)

3 x 155mm Mle 1917 Howitzer (USA)

4 x FT17 (USA)

3 x 18pdr Field Gun (ANZAC)

8 x 18pdr Field Gun (Britain) - roughly 12 more unpainted.

British 18pdr Field Gun

2 x 6" 26cwt Howitzer M1989 (Britain)

2 x 6" 26cwt Howitzer M1916 (Britain) - two more unpainted.

1 x 60pdr MkI (Britain) - Handmade by Mal Wright

1 x 8" MkII Howitzer (Britain) - Handmade by Mal Wright

Top is 8" MkII and the 60pdr is on the bottom.

1 x 15cm FK16 Lange Kanone (Germany) - Handmade by Mal Wright!

1 x 21cm Lange Morser M1916 (Germany) - Handmade by Mal Wright!

1 x 15cm Lang M17 Howitzer (Germany)

Left:15cm FK16 | Right: Morser M1916

9 x 7.7cm FK96nA Krupp Field Guns (Germany) - still a lot more to paint

5 x 7.7cm FK16 Krupp Field Guns (Germany)

4 x 10.5cm FH 98/09 Krupp Howitzers (Germany)

1 x 13.5cm K 1909 (Germany) - Handmade by Mal Wright!

2 x 15cm sFH13 Krupp (Germany) 

1 x 10cm K17 Krupp (Germany) - Handmade by Mal Wright!

2 x 15cm sFH02 Krupp (Germany) 

1 x 7.7cm IG16 (Germany) - Handmade by Mal Wright!

1 x 5cm IG15 (Germany) - Handmade by Mal Wright!

That is 59 guns so far! Wow! I still have to do the French, Belgians, Russians, and Austrians. I eventually need to finish painting the rest of the unpainted artillery (maybe 24 more guns). Crew will be added as they are painted.

I also decided to use round discs to represent forward observers in the games. I don't have any good miniatures for that roll, and FOs just need to be represented on the table. I made FOs for Germany, USA/UK, Austria, Russia, and France.

INFANTRY

Also, I have based, but not flocked the following WW1 infantry:

Early War Germans (12 Regiments, plus 2 Brigades of Landwehr, 20+ MGs) I keep my WW1 infantry in map chest draws with each division on its own tray for easy access.

Early and Late War British (11 Brigades)

Early and Late War French (4 or 5 divisions, EW not shown)

Late War USA (2+ Divisions)

I have so much work to do on this collection, but I'm making progress! Happy Gaming!

Eric